On first reading this passage, in the widow’s basement library—lit only by candles to conjure a suitably supernatural atmosphere, he suspected—Adam had felt an almost erotic thrill of discovery.
The Gnostics had concluded that the world (by this they meant Earth, of course, but their logic would now have to include the known universe) had, indeed, been created. But not by God. By the Demiurge, a being with god-like power who was not without limitations. The Demiurge was not all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good. He was more powerful than any mortal, more knowledgeable than any human could begin to conceive. But all good? No, of course not. If he was, he would alleviate suffering. But, as the Gnostics had concluded, the Demiurge had a far more understandable relationship with his creations. He had favorites. The Demiurge was the god of the Old Testament, the god who commanded Abraham to kill his own son, the god who ordered the Israelites to kill the Amalekites. “Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.” To the Gnostics, the reason this capricious, vengeful god didn’t sound much like the all-forgiving Being spoken of by the Christ, was very simple. It was a different god. A difficult god, true. A violent god, yes. But a god, nonetheless. The early Gnostics wanted humanity to turn their back on this god and embrace the Nazarene’s merciful father-figure.
This was the point at which Adam and Robert Byfield parted company. Byfield took the side of the Gnostics in their rejection of the Demiurge. He considered it was important that Christians should acknowledge the reality of this flawed creator, only to reject it in favor of that weak, naive do-gooder, Jesus.
For Adam, this was a major misstep. He knew—through personal experience every bit as powerful as that of the Gnostics—that the Demiurge was not only real, but reachable. He was an angry god, and he was ready to come back and favor his chosen people. Adam would lead a new nation, a new tribe, made up of the strongest - those who had demonstrated the strength to pursue power for its own sake, whatever the consequences for others.
Adam had grown stronger with every sacrifice he had offered. Every hit, every murder committed for his own reasons, all had been offered to the dark god, the Demiurge. And, to his deep inner joy, the darkness had grown within him with every drop of blood he spilled.
Like Nietzsche, Adam had looked into the abyss. In Adam’s case, the abyss had not only looked back, it had embraced him like a lover. Now, there was little to separate them. Adam was the abyss.
He stepped up to the door of the tiny bookshop, stepped inside and turned the sign around to read Closed.
33
Mee watched the familiar signs flash by as the bus cruised south on the motorway. The road was busy, and she couldn’t resist cracking open the window an inch to listen to the unfamiliar sound of quiet, electric traffic. Roads that only allowed electric vehicles had gradually become common in Britain over the last twenty years, but as Mee had spent almost all of that time on Innisfarne, it was still a novelty to her. It also seemed bizarre to watch every car, bus, and truck drive itself. It was illegal to self-drive on Britain’s motorways, and the 97% fall in traffic accidents was hard to argue with.
As they reached the outskirts of London, Mee was amazed by how clean the buildings looked, when they weren’t being covered, daily, by particles of diesel or petrol fumes. And we used to breathe that shit.
The novelty of the sparkling buildings and near-silent streets wore off as the first graffiti appeared. Both sides were represented - Be Afraid…was next to Bag ‘em and tag ‘em and Manna wanka. Mee felt an echo of the fear and sadness she had sometimes known at school when someone made a casually racist remark. Racism had declined during her lifetime, but its ugly shadow was never far away. Now those who only felt safe when they had someone unlike themselves to blame for their problems had latched on to Manna users.
She reached Victoria coach station late in the afternoon and looked around at the crowds. Suddenly, the task of finding one girl amongst millions took on a tangible reality, and she felt light-headed, her legs shaky and weak. She realized she hadn’t eaten since the previous evening.
The cafe served Italian style hot chocolate which, along with a fried-egg sandwich (with far too much brown sauce), went a long way to restoring Mee’s equilibrium.
She didn’t know where to start, so she rummaged around in her bag for her notebook. She found it, along with the unfamiliar cell phone, which she’d forgotten about. She thumbed it on and stared at the screen, hoping nothing had changed too much since she’d last used one. Her thumb brushed the camera icon, and suddenly her mother’s face filled the screen. Mee flinched in surprise, and her mother did the same. It took another second to realize her mother was still dead and the face she was looking at belonged to her.
“Shitcocks,” she muttered. She tried smiling at the screen. That was better. But if she didn’t find Joni soon, the worry was obviously going to turn her into her mother.
She typed Arrived in London. More soon. Mee turned off the phone, not seeing a tiny golden spider appear on the keypad, emerging from it as if its body was growing out of the phone itself. She stared into space, feeling suddenly lost, wondering where to start looking for her daughter. If she allowed it, her imagination was ready, and willing, to supply endless images of Joni crying, lost, terrified and alone. She couldn’t afford the time wasted by dwelling on it. She sat up straighter.
“Right,” she said out loud. “If I was Joni, where would I go?”
A voice in her head answered her. It sounded eerily familiar. A man’s voice, American. It wasn’t quite right, but it was so close to the one she remembered that she had to grip the sides of the table and hold on.
It was—or, more accurately, it was uncannily similar to—Seb’s voice.
“You’d go to Canary Wharf.”
Mee spent a few seconds convinced that she had just experienced an aural hallucination. Just when she needed her brain to be functioning at one hundred percent, it was tormenting her with imaginary voices. She forced herself to breathe slowly, inhaling through her nose, exhaling through her mouth. Years and years of meditation training allowed her to begin to settle her mind and she relaxed her grip on the table.
Then a figure appeared in the chair opposite. It was as if someone was flicking through the pages of a book - a book full of male faces, all subtly different. The faces kept changing at a bewildering pace as the body gained solidity, until—in a moment when the world itself seemed to pause in expectation—the figure settled, becoming as real as every other customer in the café.
She looked at the man now sitting opposite her. For a long moment, Mee was incapable of rational thought, let alone speech. She just stared and slowly allowed the ludicrous situation to filter through the various strata of her consciousness and be accepted as reality, whatever that is.
He was dressed in black. Black suit, black T-shirt. Somehow, she knew without looking that he was wearing old white sneakers. He was unshaven. His face was that of a man in his thirties, but his eyes were older. It was hard to look away from those eyes. They looked like they’d seen things she didn’t want to see. If there was any truth in the expression, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, then this guy must be very, very strong. And yet there was still a playfulness there as if he had elected not to take anything seriously, ever.
Even though it wasn’t him—she knew it wasn’t him—the man sitting opposite Mee looked very much like Seb Varden.
With a huge effort, she managed to tear her gaze away from those eyes, take a long, ragged breath, shake her head and look again.
He was still there, and now he was smiling.
“You’re right. I’m not Seb. But I was, once. Kinda.”
Mee tried to speak. Certain processes in her brain began to function, but not efficiently enough to get through to her mouth, which was hanging open. She managed to close it, finally, which was progress of a sort.
“Who? Whoyou? Whata what?”
Not-Se
b waited. He gestured at the hot chocolate, and she obeyed unthinkingly, taking a long sip. It tasted real - just as good, just as creamy, still far too sweet. The plastic seat was just as uncomfortable as it had been when she first sat down. The café was still buzzing with conversation. It was only the man opposite that was wrong. Impossible. Crazy.
“Who are you?” she said when her brain managed to regain some of its essential functionality. A couple of people at the next table broke off their conversation and stared at her. She ignored them, focusing on the man opposite.
“Best not to speak aloud,” he said, smiling. “You’re the only one who can see me. Try not to draw attention to yourself. London’s not quite the tolerant haven it once was, Mee.”
Hearing a voice so like Seb’s saying her name caused Mee’s heart rate to accelerate and her eyes to fill with tears.
“Whoa, tiger,” said the man. “I know this is hard to take in, but time isn’t on our side. I’m not Seb, but I am here to help find your daughter. I’ve been keeping an eye out for you for nearly eighteen years, so kudos on disappearing so effectively. Joni needs your help, and she needs it real soon. Let’s talk on the way there.”
“Where?”
“I told you already. Canary Wharf. Let’s go.”
34
Robert Byfield was an old man, stooped and frail, a few wispy strands of white hair pulled across his head in a futile attempt to cover his liver-spotted pate. He didn’t look up when the bell above the door rang. He continued placing books on a shelf, his back to the door, even when Adam stood directly behind him and said, politely, “Mr Byfield?”
Adam couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Byfield may have allowed his personal beliefs to lead him away from the obvious conclusion of his own logic—that the Demiurge was the only god worthy of the name—but he had, nevertheless, provided a stunningly well-argued case for the existence of a god all but forgot by modern apologetics. Adam had expected a robust specimen, his inner vigor mirrored by a hearty exterior. Instead, he was standing behind a small, deaf old man with his pants pulled up to his ribs, muttering to himself while he shoved used copies of CS Lewis’s half-baked nonsense onto the dusty shelves.
He tapped him on the shoulder, and the old man jumped in surprise, dropping three books onto the floor. He mumbled something incomprehensible over his shoulder at Adam as he bent painfully to retrieve them. Then he shuffled off toward the back of the shop, changed his glasses for another pair on the counter, fiddled with the settings on an old-fashioned hearing aid attached to his belt, and, finally, turned his watery blue eyes on Adam.
“How may I help you?”
In answer, Adam took his copy of Demiurge from his backpack and placed it on the counter. The old man peered at it for a few moments, then chuckled wheezily.
“Not one of my finer efforts, I’m afraid. Where on earth did you dig this up? It’s been out of print for thirty years.”
“A private library,” said Adam then, receiving no response, he repeated it at twice the volume. Byfield just laughed again.
“Well, the collector shows appalling taste, I’m sorry to say. I wish I’d stood up to my publisher at the time. It had the makings of a half-decent addition to the canon, but my agent insisted there would be a bigger market if I made it more lurid. I was a young man, with little money and slim prospects of changing that situation. I allowed my better judgment to be swayed by the lure of riches, I’m afraid. And that book was the result. I’m a little ashamed of it, to tell the truth.”
He picked it up and flicked through some of the pages, shaking his head.
“Still, you’ve brought it here. Tracked me down to my lair, as it were. It would be ungentlemanly of me to refuse.”
He produced a fountain pen and uncapped it, holding it poised over the first page. “To whom should I make it out? Now, now, speak up. Don’t be shy. I’m a little deaf, I’m afraid.”
Adam took the pen from Byfield and recapped it. With a great deal more patience than he felt he said, “What do you mean, you’re ashamed of it?”
“Well, well. I’m not saying it has no merit whatsoever, merely that I committed the unforgivable error of pursuing one line of argument to the exclusion of other points of view. It makes for a more dramatic read, perhaps, but much of it is, I’m afraid, misleading.”
He flicked through the pages again, finding the chapter he was looking for about three-quarters of the way through the book.
“Look here, for instance. I state that the Demiurge must be a real being, if you follow the logic of the Gnostics, but I offer no supporting statements, and I certainly don’t give much time to those who pulled apart their faulty conclusions.”
“Faulty?” Adam removed a bundle from his backpack and began to unwrap it.
“Yes, yes. The Gnostic position has been discredited for centuries. One colossal, fundamental error: their theories about the Demiurge were based on their view concerning the different qualities displayed by the God of the Old Testament compared to that of the New. They drew the conclusion—hastily, without proper consideration—that this indicated two beings.”
Adam finished unwrapping the knife and placed it on top of the oilskin protective wrappings. Byfield didn’t even glance at it as he continued to hold forth.
“Embarrassing, really. And I have far fewer excuses than the Gnostics did to continue to advance their discredited, faulty proposition. Ah, the folly of youth.”
Adam banged his hand on the counter, causing the knife to slide to one side. He caught it and returned it. He was succumbing to anger. Irrational anger.
“What faulty proposition?”
Byfield laughed again, then lapsed into a fit of coughing that lasted nearly a minute. Adam stood silently beside him, the darkness reaching out from his core and beginning to settle into his limbs. He felt a powerful calm begin to envelop him.
“Oh, simply the idea of two gods. Ridiculous. The truth was, as it usually is, far simpler. The apparent change in God’s nature is, of course, nothing of the sort. Mankind changed, not God. The Bible is a description of an evolving relationship, as brutal, violent, short-sighted humanity gradually—painfully—learned more and more about the eternal nature of God. The one, true, God.”
He caught sight of the carved dagger and before Adam knew what was happening, he had switched on a powerful lamp and was examining it in awe.
“My goodness, my goodness me, what a beautiful piece. I have never seen such a perfect example. This must be, what - two and a half thousand years old? The carvings on the handle have survived remarkably well. An ancient form of Hebrew, yes? Where on earth did you find it?”
Adam reached over and took it from Byfield.
“It belonged to my Father,” he said. “Half of his considerable fortune was spent looking for this knife. But it was worth it. And it has repaid that investment many times over. It is a knife made for one reason - sacrifice. And, tonight, it will finally be used for a sacrifice worthy of the Demiurge.”
Byfield wasn’t laughing anymore
“What on earth are you talking about?” he said.
“This knife,” said Adam, “was made by Abram, who came to be known as Abraham. The first man who showed he had the potential to understand the true nature of his god, even if that meant sacrificing his only son, Isaac. Ultimately, he was a failure, as were those who followed him. That ends tonight.”
Byfield looked at the knife in horror, a terrifying realization finally dawning.
“You’re crazy,” he said, backing away without taking his eyes away from the dagger. “Get out. Leave my shop immediately.”
It was Adam’s turn to laugh, though Byfield detected not a shred of amusement in the sound. He carefully re-wrapped the dagger and replaced it in his backpack.
Byfield wheezed in confusion. “I’m sorry, young man,” he said. “For one awful moment then, I thought you were going to…well, well. No harm done. No harm done.”
“I wouldn’t desecrate such a hol
y object on a traitor,” said Adam. He looked into the old man’s watery eyes and allowed the darkness to reveal itself.
“Oh my God,” said Byfield as Adam approached.
“Wrong god,” said Adam, and placed his hands on the scrawny old throat, squeezing with such force that—half a minute before asphyxiation would have snuffed out his life, Byfield’s windpipe snapped.
35
For Mee, the journey across London was one of the most surreal experiences since Joni had been born. For the first five minutes or so, she existed in a numb bubble of shock, barely able to think.
Mutely, she followed the man who wasn’t Seb out of the coach station and got into a cab. As she slid onto the black leather seat, the driver turned around and flashed a smile which contained as many gold teeth as white.
“Where to? Oh.” The man frowned briefly, then smiled again. Disconcertingly, the new smile was very different, as was—suddenly—the way he held his head. And his eyes. They looked…
Mee turned to not-Seb. He wasn’t there. The taxi driver looked back through the windshield, then stamped on the accelerator. Mee was thrown back in her seat before she could react to the disappearance of her guide. Then the driver spoke again. His voice was now a very strange mixture of north London and New York, with a hint of Seb’s cadences and vocabulary throw in.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 85
